A farm in the woods

bats

Note the chiminea for firelight and the water feature for a nice, restful water sound.

Summer Showers (The Perseid Meteor Showers)

As you may have gatherer from my previous missals, we are not having a very great summer. We have had cool, rainy days even in August. But, wonder of wonders, we have had a few hot days just recently. This means it is time to pull out the outdoor sleeping arrangements. For us it is an old futon frame, an air mattress and usually mosquito netting.

The nighttime temperatures this past week have been in the mid sixties and this is great for sleeping out. So last night we slept out. There was a particular motivation for doing this. It is one of the several nights that the Perseid Meteor Showers are visible in our area.

It was about 72 degrees outside at ten when we packed up and went to sleep on the patio. Very comfortable to be sleeping out with a light quilt. We took an extra quilt just in case. We didn’t have our mosquito netting because it has seen better days and needs to be replaced. No Zika yet in our area.

Instead of the netting, I opted for three small citronella candles in terra cotta flower pots to keep them safe. The smudge to keeps the blood-thirsty buggers at bay. It worked and created a great ambience for falling asleep without too much light interference to see the stars.

Moths were attracted to the light of the candles and were flitting around over our heads in the dim light. I commented on that. Then suddenly other critters arrived. Yes, the bats. These are very effective at controlling the mosquitoes. When night falls, bats take over. A nursing female little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) may consume her body weight in insects each night during the summer. They were circling overhead until I blew out all but one of the candles. Three candles were keeping us awake. One candle was enough smudge and the moths were no longer attracted.

We live in peace with the bats here and see them often in the late dusk. Many folks mistakenly identify them as late hunting swallows as their flight patterns are similar. We don’t correct them because many feel negatively toward bats. There is nothing to fear with these small animals. They are beneficial.

I did manage to see on meteor blip across the sky momentarily, before finally took my glasses off and went to sleep.

It was a pretty sleepless night; the excitement of sleeping outside, the waking and searching the sky yet again to see meteors, the dog stealing the covers. All made for a wakeful night.

By early morning I reached for the extra quilt, firstly because my husband and the dog had most of the covers and, secondly, because I was cold. We got up about 7:30 to a bright clear day. We both had finally fallen sound asleep in the wee hours to wake to daylight. I commented that I had been chilly and that it was a little more “refreshing” than we had expected consider the heat of yesterday.

When I came in the house, I checked the temperature and it was 54 degrees outside. No wonder we were cold. When it is this temperature in the fall and we are sleeping out, I bring out the down quilt, not the thin one I used on the bed last night! Tonight we will be prepared, and maybe we might just see meteors.